CI Enhancements Overview

by Jeff Vance
Commercial Systems Division

Overview

The Command Interpreter (CI) has been improved in MPE/iX Release 5.5, which includes the CI enhancements added in MPE/iX-Express 3 based on General Release 5.0.

This article briefly summarizes the enhancements. For more details, see the article, "A Detailed Look at CI Enhancements," in Chapter 10, "Technical Articles."

CI Enhancements

The following enhancements were added to the CI in MPE/iX Release 5.5:

  • Eight new predefined CI variables) were added:

    • HPLOCIPADDR
    • HPREMIPADDR
    • HPLOCPORT
    • HPREMPORT
    • HPSTREAMEDBY
    • HPLASTJOB
    • HPOSVERSION
    • HPRELVERSION

    Now it is possible to filter remote connections to your HP 3000 via a logon UDC that examines the remote accessor's IP address and port number. This information is also available via the AIFs (please see the Communicator articles: "AIF Enhancement to AIFPROCGET Overview," in Chapter 3, "System Management," and "AIF Enhancement to AIFPROCGET Details," in Chapter 10, "Technical Articles").

  • To support the longer HFS names, CI string variables are now 1024 characters long. Additionally, approximately twice the number of user-defined variables can be created in MPE/iX Release 5.5.

  • Parsing of of user input and command output is easier in Release 5.5. Five new CI evaluator functions were added: word(), edit(), repl(), delimpos() and pmatch(). Also the input(), str() and rht() functions have been enhanced.

  • Command files and UDCs can be protected by granting only execute (X) access to their users. You can execute the command file but cannot see its contents. This is the same behavior that has been available for stream files.

  • To ease password management, the JOBSECURITY command was enhanced to allow jobs to be streamed without embedded passwords and without password prompting. This is described in the Communicator article, "New JOBSECURITY Feature," in Chapter 3, "System Management."

  • Command files can use the full POSIX naming standards, and the HPPATH variable now supports directory names.

  • The REDO command can upshift and downshift characters and delete, upshift or downshift a word.

  • The CI recognizes a leading "#" as a comment line.

  • Online help is now available for all CI variables and evaluator functions and all FINFO items. Simply enter:.

    :help VARIABLES
    To see all of the predefined CI variables

    :help HPCWD
    (or any variable name) to see a description of an individual variable

    :help FINFO
    To see the FINFO items